Borders to Borderless: An Analysis of the Social Construction of the US Securitization Agenda (2006-2010)

Dané Smith

doi:10.22151/politikon.29.14

Authors

Dané Smith Monash University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.29.14

Keywords:

security studies, National Security Strategy, US securitisation, 9/11 attacks, Iraq invasion, cybersecurity, social constructivism, technological determinism

Abstract

This study explores the relative contributions of state rhetoric, the public sphere and corporate elite interests towards the construction of the 2010 US National Security Strategy (NSS). Interpreted thusly, the evolution in the US securitisation agenda illustrates the social construction of US securitisation strategy as a national artefact seemingly informed by local interests but framed within international uncertainty. Exploring the relative contributions of state rhetoric, the public sphere and corporate elite interests thusly, indicates that different threat matrixes emerge from the social forces that propel the 2010 NSS into being. The research, in accordance with its approach, finds that the focus of securing the threat of risk to national interests and assets within international uncertainty, results in the form of US securitisation strategy not fully realising its function of securitisation. Through deliberating on how and why particular threats are prioritised above others to the nation-state, this article seeks to motivate further research into the social construction of policy priorities to better understand how and why threat matrixes shift in the 21^st Century.

Author Biography

Dané Smith, Monash University

Dané Smith, 24, is a South African national raised in the Sultanate of Oman with a Honours Degree in Bachelor of Social Science from Monash University. Her dissertation analyzed the social construction of US securitisation agendas across the twenty-first century. She is currently working in Muscat, Oman as an English Lecturer at the Oman Medical College. She has been accepted as a PhD candidate at Monash University starting March 2016 where she will be specializing into the migration-security nexus and conflict-resolution in the Middle East. Her interests include security and development, migration, peacebuilding, conflict resolution, security studies, transnational studies, foreign intervention and the Middle East region.